The cattle industry comprises two major components, producers and feedlots. Cattle producers raise cattle on pasture grazing land, much of which is unsuitable for cultivation. After the cattle reach a certain size, the producers send the cattle to a feedlot. A feedlot is a place where cattle are specially fed and cared for to promote further growth and improve their condition and characteristics before shipment to a packing plant for slaughter. Feedlots generally care for thousands of head of cattle or other animals in various stages of growth. These animals come from a variety of producers with widely varying previous care and feed performance history.
Cattle in feedlots are typically sorted by various criteria, such as ownership, lot number, or date of arrival. Some feedlots recently have tried sorting by other criteria, such as size, growth performance history, etc. The cattle are kept in cattier pens, with each pen typically including a feed bunk to receive feed, a water source for drinking, and usually manually operated gates to enable the animals to enter and exit the pens and in some cases be resorted. Feedlots generally also include a hospital area where individual cattle that are ill or otherwise in need of treatment can be moved to and treated before being returned to their pens. For a description of an automated feedlot sorting and electronic cattle management system that has recently been introduced in a few feedlots, see applicant's co-pending application Ser. No. 08/332,563, filed Oct. 31, 1994, which is incorporated herein by reference.
Producers have various charges assessed to them for the care and maintenance of their animals at feedlots. These charges are typically assessed by lot number at periodic intervals based on feedlot care and maintenance records. Examples of charges include feed ration charges, health care charges, growth-promotion product charges and handling charges. Assessment of changes by lot number is at best an inexact science, giving only an average approximation of the cost of feeding and caring for each animal in the lot.
To track these charges and ensure that each producer is charged the proper amount, each animal is assigned a disposable identification tag having a unique identification number that is visibly displayed on the outside of the tag to identify the lot number of the animal and/or an animal number. The identification tag is clipped to the ear of the animal by the producer prior to shipment to the feedlot, or by the feedlot when the animal arrives. In either case, the unique identification number may be entered into a database maintained at the feedlot. The database also may store the various charges associated with maintaining the lot of cattle and correlate the charges to the appropriate identification numbers and, as a result, to the proper producers.
Typically, when a lot of animals has reached its estimated optimum growth and value, or a predetermined shipping date arrives, the feedlot ships the lot of cattle (with the disposable identification tags still attached to the animals) to a packing plant for slaughter and packing. Packing plants are generally under different ownership than feedlots and maintain their own databases or other records for tracking the cattle by lot or ownership, or feedlot within the packing plant. After the cattle are slaughtered, each carcass is mounted on a trolley hook and the identification tags are removed and discarded. After processing the carcasses, the packing plant reports carcass data including grading, cost and market value data, to the feedlot.
Recently, a few feedlots and producers have begun using electronic identification tags, rather than disposable tags. The electronic tags allow for easier and more accurate tracking of the animals through the care and growth process at a feedlot. Additionally, the electronic tags may potentially allow the packing plant to match carcass data and feedlot live animal data on an individual animal basis for large numbers of animals originating from many different feedlots. Unfortunately, such electronic identification tags are expensive (e.g., approximately $8.00 apiece). In order to make the electronic identification tags commercially feasible by reducing their effective cost, the feedlots and producers must have their electronic tags returned to them from the packing plant for reuse, rather than having the packing plant discard the tags.
Unfortunately, some problems arise when the packing plants return the tags. For example, the packing plants may return identification tags to feedlots by keeping a count of how many head of cattle were received from a feedlot and then returning to the feedlot an equal number of tags. But, in such a case, the packing plant may commingle tags from multiple feedlots and redistribute the tags arbitrarily.
Feedlots and producers, however, want their original tags returned. The electronic identification tags cost approximately $8 apiece, and a typical feedlot or producer invests hundreds of thousands of dollars in tags. Like any electronic component, the tags have a limited life span, particularly because of the harsh treatment animal identification tags are subjected to. Consequently, feedlots and producers want tags collected at the packing plant to be sorted and returned to their original source. This way, feedlots and producers can protect their investment in the tags and ensure that they do not receive another feedlot's tags, which may be old, mistreated or otherwise damaged.
Currently, the only way to ensure that electronic tags are returned by the packing plant to the proper feedlot is to manually sort the tags. This requires manually reading a tag and cross-referencing the tag's unique identification number with the originating feedlot, which is 30 burdensome, expensive and slow. As a result, the packing plants do not manually sort, and therefore, feedlots and producers are reluctant to use electronic tags. Thus, as a practical matter, currently carcass data and live animal data cannot be correlated and used to make producer and feedlot production and management decisions.
Approximately 12 million head of cattle are quartered at feedlots throughout the United States. Manually sorting 12 million tags a year would take not only an enormous amount of effort but would also be so labor-intensive and therefore expensive for the packing plant as to be unacceptable. Accordingly, there is a need for an automated system and method for processing, sorting, and recycling electronic tags for reuse by their original users.